How do civility and citizenship, aspects of the individual’s attachment
to a liberal democratic society, affect the nature and future of that society?
This book reminds us of the fragility of a good political order and the
complexities of maintaining liberal democracy, even when actions of citizens
arc wise and virtuous.

Professor Banfield states that history and reflection tell us that a
majority may tyrannize cruelly over a minority. What we want is not majority
rule simply, but majority rule plus the protection of certain rights that
pertain to individuals. This is the difference between democracy and liberal
democracy; in the latter there is a private sphere into which the governing
authority may not intrude.

Citizenship implies a sense of shared responsibility for the conduct
of a regime; a regime is fully liberal but less than fully democratic if
rights are protected but significant numbers of persons are denied, or
decline to accept and exercise, the duties of citizenship. It will be found
that by this test the number of nations that approach the ideal of liberal
democracy–that are at once very liberal and democratic–is painfully small
and that the most liberal are not those in which citizenship is most widely
held and exercised.

If a liberal democratic society is to continue as such there must be
widely respected institutions, practices, and modes of thought that encourage
or demand the making of concessions where necessary to preserve the degree
of harmony without which the society could not continue as a going concern.
The obligation of the citizen to obey the law is one such safeguard of
order. The idea of civic virtue is another. Civility, the culturally ingrained
willingness to tolerate behavior that is offensive, is yet another.